Posted
by
CmdrTaco
on Thursday February 03, 2011 @10:08AM
from the big-surprise-here dept.

eldavojohn writes "In a blog post titled 'Setting the Record Straight,' Microsoft's senior vice president of online services, Yusuf Mehdi, addressed Google's 'Bing Sting' operation saying, 'We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop. We have some of the best minds in the world at work on search quality and relevance, and for a competitor to accuse any one of these people of such activity is just insulting.' Mehdi went on to claim that Google engaged in 'click fraud' in order to rig up their alleged 'experiment.' Mehdi added, 'That's right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus search results. What does all this cloak and dagger click fraud prove? Nothing anyone in the industry doesn't already know.' The struggle for Bing to usurp Google as number one in search continues."

To be clear, we learn from all of our customers. What we saw in today’s story was a spy-novelesque stunt to generate extreme outliers in tail query ranking. It was a creative tactic by a competitor, and we’ll take it as a back-handed compliment. But it doesn’t accurately portray how we use opt-in customer data as one of many inputs to help improve our user experience.

Apparently Google's accusations are viewed by some as a backhanded compliment.

Apparently Google's accusations are viewed by some as a backhanded compliment.

I don't thing they're wrong. I remember years and years ago how excited the Slashdot crowd got when Microsoft started directly addressing their superiority over Linux in their marketing propaganda. It meant Linux was enough of a threat that Microsoft was taking it seriously.

When was the last time you heard Google talk about other search engines? When it comes to searching, Google's been the undisputed market leader for a long time. For them to seriously acknowledge Bing, even if it's solely in the form of criticism, is still a big step.

I think they may very well have gotten all libertarian if google had tried, or indeed still does try, to involve the court system.

I think the way most of us, and at the very least I, view this as a simple case of dirty pool (think that may have been in one of the google posts).

I think what is mostly being missed in all of the talk about this is the fact that if we take Microsoft assertion, that what google did was click fraud, at face value then we are left with the fact that one person manually clicking o

Apparently Google's accusations are viewed by some as a backhanded compliment.

It's like in a kid's cartoon, where the hero says something like "This is a terrible crime you're committing, villanor!" and the villain says something like "MUAHAHAHA, why yes, it's wonderfully terrible, isn't it?"

I still don't understand how this is in any way dodgey or underhanded.

Step 1: User opts in to report anonymous clickthrough data to Bing

Step 2: User searches for a term, chooses a search result

Step 3: Microsoft gets the data and compares it against relevent information for that search term.

Since google chose a random, unique for their search term, there is nothing to compare the user behavior with so it receives a disproportionately high amount of weight. With actual search terms, what a user searches for

Of course! If they did it themselves their IP address would be quickly banned by Google so they have to rely on their botnet^W opt-in user base to distribute the queries.

There was a/. article about Bing last year where they said that their major failing was in not catering to the long tail end of search, so this would appear to be a way of correcting that. You have got to wonder how they manage to keep failing though - their search engine is so bad that even making it the default on 90% of computers can't

They're not *copying* the result. They're *adding* that particular term->URL combination to their database.

This *only* worked because Google chose terms that nobody had ever searched before: "fdsfhasjhdajhhj". So when you do a Bing search for "fdsfhasjhdajhhj" it showed the same results because that's the *only* data Bing had in their index for the term "fdsfhasjhdajhhj".

Ok, Google, you found a way to (excuse the terminology) Google-bomb Bing using a nonsense word. Now if you can show this technique work

Their opt-in terms are vague. To me it read as if they were implying that the information collected would be from their service so they can fine tune it. I would never have concluded that they were going to be stealing Google's search.

The way that Google has become so popular is that their search engine is used so much that the good stuff works to the top. Microsoft is trying to accomplish this without putting in the hard work up front.

I've said over and over that those toolbars are there for no other purpose other than tracking. Do you guys really think that those pretty buttons are all that useful? Did you guys not know that there's a drop down so you can switch search engines on the fly? Did you not know you can add additional search engines?

How many of you have gone to the gas station only to have someone come up to you with a gasoline can asking for some gas? It's annoying, they make it out like they are just trying to get from place to place. Then you see them later doing the same thing with someone else. At first you felt charitable and then you realized they are just a con and they are stealing from you.

The way that sting went down shows unequivocally that Microsoft is copying Google's search using the Bing toolbar.

So many act as if Microsoft is this weak up and comer and this is what the competition must do, when in reality Microsoft is a massive behemoth that makes billions of dollars every quarter in profit. And how many other companies have they stolen from using similar tactics? Over the past couple of decades it would be impossible to count--there are so many.

The "bot-net" analogy seems apt. The fact that they are doing this seems as if it is plausible to list the Bing toolbar as a spyware tool. And, if I recall in the past Microsoft had stake in another toolbar that was determined to be spyware/adware. Hotbar I believe it was called. Didn't it also do something similar? Hasn't Microsoft been shown to use other companies as proxies to do their dirty work?

They aren't copying Google's results. They are recording which particular, individual result, of possibly thousands returned, the user actually found relevant. And, from what I understand, it's not specific to Google.

No, they're copying Google's results, they're just doing it selectively. That's what Google's experiment demonstrated. They're taking results that would Bing would never return at all for a particular search query - because it's not smart enough to figure out they're in any way related to the query - but that Google does find, and adding them to Bing's results for that specific query.

I think most people choosing to opt-in are doing so because they feel that their "bing" searches would be relevant to Microsoft in improving their "bing" search system. I don't think any understood that Microsoft was going to be watching everything they do and every site they searched, including their competitor's.

Reading the Bing opt-in option I would never have concluded that Microsoft would have been using the Bing toolbar to collect search information from Google. I would have concluded that they were going to follow the process happening at their site in order to fine tune their site.

What Microsoft is doing is being a parasite. And it shows that they can't work out their own system. It tells me that they are failures and are willing to do anything to create a competent product (something they can't do on their own apparently).

When the experiment was ready, about 20 Google engineers were told to run the test queries from laptops at home, using Internet Explorer, with Suggested Sites and the Bing Toolbar both enabled.

So the Google engineers installed the bing toolbar, and when they did, Microsoft asked them if it was okay to look at the sites they visited and the links they clicked on, to which they replied "Okay." The Google engineers then typed in the phony terms, visited the phony links, and thereby sent the phony data to
Microsoft.

Microsoft sees it and says, "it looks like people are searching for this term and like this r

Are you stupid? Or being intentionally obtuse? The Google employee became part of the group of Bing Toolbar users in order to show that Bing was copying search results from the clickstream data. The fact that the search results are fake is essential in proving that fact. The only people who are being deceitful are those stating that Bing is not copying results from Google. They're copying search results from everyone including Google, and Google proved it.

That's one way of viewing it, and obviously the way MS is spinning it. On the other hand, once you look deeper, MS' account actually validates Google's account and makes Bing look like a total piece of crap. Furthermore, once you actually critically review what Microsoft is say, they are in fact confirm Bing is a total piece of shit without farming Google.

Google notices Bing providing Google's results. Google investigates and sets up a sting. Google validates Bing is stealing Google's results, including rank significance. Microsoft fires back with details which attempt to ignore the fact that are taking Google's results as their own; including rank significance which is the most significant element of a modern search engine. Ultimately, it doesn't matter how MS got the data, its the fact that they are reproducing Google's results by using Google's results. No matter how you slice it, that's cheating. Period. Which basically confirms - Bing is absolute shit and is only better than shit when they are farming other search engines. Which, if you think about it, Microsoft is absolutely confirming all other search engines are better than Bing - otherwise they'd never have a need to farm everyone else.

Basically, you have two choices, you can turn your brain off and accept Microsoft's account, or you can dig a little deeper and see that Google is NOT annoyed by Bing, rather they are annoyed by Bing stealing and reproducing Google's hard work and claiming its Bing's own. Basically, Microsoft is actually confirming Bing is a piece of shit and that they only way they can produce good results is to farm their competition. Which in turn means, your conclusion is 180-degrees wrong. Basically, Google and Microsoft are concurrently confirming how good Google is and confirming how bad Bing works without farming their competitors. Again, no matter how you slice it, Microsoft confirm Bing is a piece of shit and that they farm their competitors results and claim them as their own.

Google has every right to be annoyed, but its impossible to presume their annoyance is validation so long as you apply any brain power to your analysis. When in fact, its Microsoft who is absolutely affirming Google's superiority to that of Bing.

Here's what I don't get.... How the heck does Bing go about grabbing Google's search results vicariously through users? Even if you tracked a user's click-through activities, it would only increase the strength of the webpages they go to, not correlate that data with unrelated topics. The results should not have been showing up on Bing's pages at all. To re-iterate, how is Bing associating webpages that have no reason to match search terms to those specific terms? I suppose they could monitor searches throu

Help Microsoft improve your online experience with personalized content by allowing us to collect additional information about your system configuration, the searches you do, websites you visit, and how you use our software. We will use this information to help improve our products and services.

You can either A) not install the toolbar at all or B) Opt not to give Microsoft this information.

Help Microsoft improve your online experience with personalized content by allowing us to collect additional information about your system configuration, the searches you do, websites you visit, and how you use our software. We will use this information to help improve our products and services.

You can either A) not install the toolbar at all or B) Opt not to give Microsoft this information.

I think that a reasonable interpretation of this by a normal user (a level actually very important in a court of law) would be that the user of the toolbar expected information about the searches made through the toolbar to be tracked. Admittedly, "information about... websites you visit," technically covers referers (sic) and google searches, but by that logic it would cover your bank account passwords too, which would almost certainly fail the reasonableness test.

Even if you tracked a user's click-through activities, it would only increase the strength of the webpages they go to, not correlate that data with unrelated topics.

While Google search results look like links directly to their targets (because they are, right up until they are clicked), Google uses javascript to dynamically rewrite the link target to google URL which includes the target page URL and search terms, which is how Google tracks the click throughs (this Google page then redirects to the real target with a 302 response.)

Consequently, if you track what link is actually followed (rather than what the link looks like before it is clicked), you will get the actua

While Google search results look like links directly to their targets (because they are, right up until they are clicked), Google uses javascript to dynamically rewrite the link target to google URL which includes the target page URL and search terms, which is how Google tracks the click throughs (this Google page then redirects to the real target with a 302 response.)

Interesting theory, but demonstrably untrue. Install Live HTTP Headers and do a Google search, then click a result. There's no such redirect.

They track clicks of search results using Javascript, using the mousedown event on each search result link. There doesn't seem to be a server-side call, so they're probably setting a cookie with the click information and then reading the cookie later, when you return to Google.

The implication of this article is quite clear:1) We are not copying Googles results2) We are monitoring what users search for and the pages they end up on as input to our search algorithm.

If 2 is true, then 1 is false, that much is clear. But there is a deeper question: is 2 a valid tactic to improve your search? I would argue that it is, even if it does indirectly copy your competitors results.

It's much more simple than that. They are calling copying "improving user experience".

It basically shows that bing can't do well enough on their own, and can only compete by mirroring google. I dont' get why they don't just mirror google's results and add a bing stamp to it.

anything wrong with that? Absolutely not. You don't hear anything about google suing for this, and there have been discussions on whether they would have standing on this (possible - grey area). Was google right to poke fun at bing? Absolutely.

Feigned insult followed by a sleight of hand in trying to associate Google's research with spammers, fraudsters, and criminals.

What a terrible attempt at denial, it's not like they actually gave any evidence in their defence. They just pretended to be offended, and then tried to change the subject.

I'm usually quite supportive of Microsoft because I honestly believe some of their products (e.g. Visual Studio) are best of breed, but this is just a joke. They seem to have been caught red handed and have no idea how to deal with it, they'd have been better off just staying quiet and letting the story fade into obscurity than crying out like this without being able to offer the slightest bit of real actual defence such as an explanation of why they ended up with an obscure search term in their search results that Google had manufactured on their search engine.

Next thing to do is for someone, maybe someone 'anonymous' to use the same trick to spam the rankings. Simply set up a proxy so that when you hit google for xxx, it returns a page containing yyy then click on it. Automate. Repeat.

Challenge: get Goatse on the first page for George W or T Blair, perhaps, or at least the dictionary page for 'idiot'.

They did offer a defense: it's the customer data. What happens is even if that customer data is only weighted as 0.001% as important as their other metrics, if that customer data is the ONLY data they have for these bogus search terms, this would happen. Google used obviously bogus search terms which have exaggerated the weighting of that data. In reality, that data might only move a page up or down a ranking on page 10 of a real search on Bing for all we know.

Unless they come up with some actual evidence of real copying, this is a non-story. The #1 complaint around here all the time seems to be that Bing ISN'T giving the same results as Google so obviously that customer data isn't be weighted as important enough!

I would think its copying simply because, if you look at how search engines work - there is NO REASON AT ALL why that term should have come up. There is no word which is common, even if you were to perform a spell correction and take synonyoms - the vectors are too distant. If they used the data to push up a popular page further up - that might have been borderline sleasy but you can't really say it was copying. The fact that they're making (hard c

Except Google did offer real searches where they thought they were the deciding factor: "torsoraphy" [searchengineland.com].
The "Bing String" showed that Microsoft's algorithm would republish Google's search results as their own. There's no way outside of reviewing Bing's algorithm and logs how many real search results are "powered by Google".

What Microsoft is tantamount to admitting is that "customer data" includes searches on a rival engine, and the relevant results. In other words, "When our competitor successfully finds a result for you, we want to know what it is." Clearly, Microsoft never asked Google if this was okay, or there would be no shock and no argument. Instead, they're using users of their opt-in program (henceforth known as mules [wikipedia.org]) in a distributed effort to get a mapping of search queries to useful results. However, those useful results were generated thanks to Google's long-standing competence in the field, and not by ANY process Bing has a hand in. Therefore it is still to be argued that Bing is appropriating, without due request or apology, a mapping of google's results weighted by the relevance to users of google's site. So tell me--how is that not copying results?

Further, the mules in this attack are legitimate Google users who are acting on good faith. And indeed, perhaps the weighting on the algorithm is such that until or unless the weighting changes, this mapping does so little to Bing's results as to be utterly innocent. However, if Bing gained dominance (at the expense of Google) because of this mapping, or if for any other reason this caused Google's service to falter or become unprofitable, those users of Google's service will have unwittingly caused its downfall, and they caused that downfall by being satisfied with Google as a product.

I'm probably overstating it, but it still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth as far as I'm concerned. There's a difference in Bing's policy versus whether or not they're successful at it. If they consider it good policy to sit on the threshold of stealing someone else's results, but then simply not weighting those results highly enough to cause trouble, then I take issue with them. It remains their prerogative to explain themselves if they want to reverse that opinion.

The problem with the scenario you're spinning is that the toolbar that collects this information is Microsoft's Bing toolbar... a toolbar that adds a Bing search bar to IE.

That's important, because your theory makes the assumption that all users of this toolbar are Google users... but why would they install the Bing toolbar?

Because they bought a computer from a vendor that has an agreement with Microsoft to preload the Bing toolbar as part of its shovelware (from a quick web search, it looks like, at a minimum, Dell, HP, Toshiba, and Lenovo do this.)

a weighted theft is no less theft than actual theft. that is not 'customer data' they're collecting.

they're purposefully collecting and parsing search result generated from customer data by google.it's as bad as a google or wikipedia iframe but more subtle. they are after all collecting advertisement money. ok, it's not as bad as murder or actual theft, still...

How do you know they are 'collecting and parsing search result by google'? What if MS has a theory that says 'after a user does a search, any and all links visited in the next 5 minutes are assumed to be related to that search'? Sure, MAYBE the result came from Google. MAYBE it came from a user selecting a result from Google, then following a link on THAT page (which Google did not return as a result). MAYBE Google came up with nothing, so the user got the link from a friend.

A clever search engine (one with high precision and recall) will give you the results you want. If you click on a result, you are assumed to have found that link useful. Google does that on its own search engine - and that's fair enough.

Now if I capture "Query" and "Correct Result", I am basically using the other search engine's technology (which is used to supply that good result) and the result of all the data collection, research and whatever - in order to improve my search results. That's not a very fair game. If my search results heavily depend on Google's search results - I am piggybacking off them.

I've nothing wrong with Google or Bing reading my searches I input into them and improving their product that way - I don't think its fair if the other company steals this data off other search engines.

They do spy on (sorry, gather 'click stream' data from) IE users (through IE itself, or one of its add-ons). Read those EULAs veeery carefully, folks!

Somehow this extremely relevant part of the story keeps getting skipped over whenever it's being told.

The 'click fraud' accusation is hilarious and quite arguably libelous as fraud (and click fraud) is a real criminal act.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_fraud [wikipedia.org]"Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per click online advertising when a person, automated script or computer program imitates a legitimate user of a web browser clicking on an ad, for the purpose of generating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link. Click fraud is the subject of some controversy and increasing litigation due to the advertising networks being a key beneficiary of the fraud.

Exactly. The moral of this story is: if you use IE, then your information is being passed to Microsoft and being used. Even if you go to google.

They can say all they want about how it happened, but the fact is, it happened. They're getting results directly as a result of google returning them. There's no two ways about this. Its true, its a voluntary act of certain customers, but that doesn't change that Bing is utilizing Google's results.

it's not just IE, though it's the one currently involved. You need to read what your software vendor reserves the right to do, particularly in the realm of installing code without your knowledge or (further) consent and spying.
It'll still be interesting to see the anti-Google Microsofties keep up the refrain of Google spies on you, so use Microsoft instead.

"The moral of this story is: if you use IE, then your information is being passed to Microsoft and being used. Even if you go to Google. "

I view this as a much more sinister part of the whole event. Whether or not IE is terrible at displaying pages is amusing, but except at that whole lock-in level, not worrisome. However if IE is actively siphoning off any kind of intelligent data, then it raises specters of worse data snooping breaches.

Click fraud is a type of Internet crime that occurs in pay per clickonline advertising when a person clicks on an ad, for the purpose ofgenerating a charge per click without having actual interest in the target of the ad's link. Use of a computer to commit this type of Internet fraud is a felony in many jurisdictions.

So, not using Adblock is a crime? I mean, I consider advertising an immoral practice and I have never purchased anything I saw in an ad, and would never do that in the future. Then if some obno

I don't follow your argument. You have to be either a person (e.g. the click farms) or a script (pretty clear) simulating being an interested person clicking on an ad with the aim of causing the website owner to get paid by the advertising company in order for it to be click fraud.

Its also quite arguably libelous claiming or inferring that a competitor is stealing your product. If they actually believe this to be true, why not launch an actual lawsuit. God knows companies love to use their lawyers. Otherwise, I'd just call it competition, and if MS happens to have a better product, Google should be nervous of them.

> quite arguably libelous claiming or inferring that a competitor is stealing your product.
Perhaps, but the
> If they actually believe this to be true, why not launch an actual lawsuit.
Umm, this is true of so many things. And also completely irrelevant to "Microsoft is spying on (some set of) IE users."
> Otherwise, I'd just call it competition
Currently, the argument you're trying to present, "Microsoft copying Google's search results is just competition" is orthogonal to the discussion I'm

You're right; it's perhaps in the privacy policy (arguably, this is part of the EULA, but it's also a separate document):

Microsoft does disclose that Suggested Sites collects information about sites you visit. From the privacy policy:
When Suggested Sites is turned on, the addresses of websites you visit are sent to Microsoft, together with standard computer information.
To help protect your privacy, the information is encrypted when sent to Microsoft. Information associated

In fairness, how should they prove that Google's accusations are false? This is the same reason that innocence should be considered the default conclusion until guilt is proven, because it may not be possible to prove one's innocence.

I can't think of a single thing Microsoft has done that was an original idea. Their entire business model seems to be "wait until someone establishes dominance in a marketplace, realize that marketplace could be profitable, put up a shitty copy of the dominant model and improve it just enough that people will use it because it's the default option leveraged with other Microsoft technologies." Well that and managing to install a tax on every computer built today. So yeah, this story is entirely plausible to

Even though your post is flamebait, isn't the market dominated by companies trying to "1-up" their competators? If that sort of competition didn't happen, who knows what our technology level would be right now.

Tell me one completely unique idea Google or Apple has had and I bet someone can provide "prior art" which Google and/or Apple simply improved on.

I can't think of a single thing Microsoft has done that was an original idea.

That's because there's no such thing as an original idea. There are ways of doing things better, cheaper, faster, or differently, but there are very truly original ideas.

Just look at iPod, iPhone, iPad. All derivative, but completely successful anyway. Even multitouch in the original iPhone is not original, straight down to the gestures. Google wasn't the first to do search and they won't be the last.

I mean, even if I were to release a hover car or anti gravity device, or even a freaking time machine it wou

This response is the usual BS handwaving from MS. There's a single paragraph which says essentially "er... they do click fraud!" without any real technical details or explanation. This is quite different from Google's posts, which are all very detailed about what they're doing and the results they're seeing. The rest of MS's article is marketing history... not once is there real explanation of how they happen to have extremely obscure words pulling results for exactly what Google does. Just spin.

Thanks for trying, MS. You can't even come up with a technical response, and you want us to believe you can come up with a search engine?

Ok, I'm quite irked by this story, and I got modded troll a bunch of times by trying to point out that Google's experiment doesn't really support their accusation. I know some people will immediately label me a shill or apologist just for having a different opinion. What's stupid is I use Google search, and never Bing.

Anyways, the following is my understanding and some opinion. The secret knowledge of the search engine is the association of a search term and a result (usually a url). So to say that Bing is copying (I think 'cheating' might have the what was used, but copying is a lot of people's interpretation), implies they are acquiring Google's association data; conversely if the Bing search comes to the same result coincidentally, then they can't be 'cheating'. It wouldn't be that surprising if two search engines return same results for certain words. However, Google did their sting with fake terms... so obviously Bing is copying right?

So let's talk about their sting. They created (100?) honeypot search terms where a fake word would return a real link 'sss4yxyxy -> returns www.myresult.com'. Then they had 20 employees using IE and Bing toolbar w/ Google search and kept using these fake terms, then clicking the resulting link. Some time later, some of these fake terms return the same results on Bing.

A few things: Google employees opted into tracking w/ the Bing toolbar. (This is somewhat beside the point anyways, since Google isn't exactly in a position to point the finger about tracking.) Note that my understanding is that few of the (100?) honeypot terms actually worked on Bing.

The explanation from MS is that the Google employees gamed their user tracking mechanism to produce a result which makes it appear as if Bing is 'copying' Google. Basically they tracked the user search term, then the link they clicked through, and used this as part of the data for Bing. Google successfully gamed this because those terms are fake, and therefore the only data about them came from the sting.

So my opinion is that this isn't copying. If 100 of 100 honeypots showed up on Bing then that would support their accusation better. If their 20 employees only used Google normally from IE, without going through the toolbar, then that would strengthen the case. Without these, I have a hard time understanding how even the people at Google have rationalized their own accusation. Now maybe MS is lying and I'm a chump, but at least I'm taking the time to consider the evidence as presented.

Just want to add one thought experiment that hopefully illustrates my point:

Let's say Google did their same sting, but their employees always clicked the 5th result down instead of the top one. Then, if MS isn't lying, that could mean the 5th result shows up on Bing search. Consider that if these were real search terms, that would actually mean that Bing is providing the more useful result. So... how does a person copying provide a better answer deterministically if all that person is doing is copying?

So to say that Bing is copying (I think 'cheating' might have the what was used, but copying is a lot of people's interpretation), implies they are acquiring Google's association data; conversely if the Bing search comes to the same result coincidentally, then they can't be 'cheating'.

To quote an above comment:

The fact that microsoft technology has advanced to the point of linking

"delhipublicschool40 chdjob"
to a Credit Union website

is simply showing how well they understand their potential customers, and has nothing to do with the fact that Google set them up at all.

They are exactly acquiring association data on Google because there's no way that result would be coincidental. Google is the only thing linking that search result to that term, there's no heuristic that makes sense to link the two other than that. Bing doesn't have Google's heuristics; they simply copy the end result.

Sigh... they are acquiring association data from the tracked users. These fake users entered 'delhipublicschool40 chdjob' into the Bing search bar, then clicked on a link to 'a Credit Union website'. If they were copying directly from Google, then 100% of honeypot search terms should have worked...

It's not like that explanation even makes MS look good per se, but I'm almost guaranteed to get modded down again.

No...that's incorrect. The fake users didn't enter 'delhipublicschool40 chdjob' into the Bing search bar. That would have initially returned zero results, and therefore nothing to 'click'.

Instead, they entered 'delhipublicschool40 chdjob' into the Google search page in a browser that happened to have the Bing search bar installed. The Bing search bar code then harvested the search term and any links clicked.

Sorry, but that's copying, and fundamentally no different than having Microsoft employees

Let's say you visit a government information website, which has its own search engine completely disconnected with Google/Bing/Yahoo/etc. No data sharing at all, but the website is publicly available.

You put in a search term trying to find an application for a Foobar. (You search "foobar application", then click the resulting link "apply for a foobar".)

The Bing toolbar looks at the action you just took, and enters it into its database. When a certain number of people (say, 20, the number Google used) do the same search and click the same result, Bing thinks to itself, "well, this search and resulting link is pretty popular-- I should add that to my index."

Now in the future, the public can search the Foobar website to find the application directly from their browser's toolbar, instead of having to go to the Foobar website first. Bing's more useful to users, and Foobar's website is more useful to users.

You are saying the the Bing toolbar sucessfully recognizes this government search page as a search and realizes which field is the search term? And recognized which click the user did subsequently as the actual link to the searched item, rather than ads, next page, new search, etc? And their AI was designed to figure this out without somebody at Bing ever looking at this page? And those writers did not design this algorithm to specifically recognize Google's search pages?

"We do not copy results from any of our competitors. Period. Full stop."

That is funny, because you have just been *caught* copying results from your competitor. Period. Full stop. No chance this was a coincidence.

Now you seem to think because you copy it from Google result page in the users browser, and not from Google directly, you are not copying Google. But clearly you are. The user is "authorised" to use Google search results, after all that is the whole point of the search engine. You are not.

And I think this attitude is a shame, because some of the technologies from MS are actually pretty decent. Just search engine technology does not seem to be among those.

Feigned outrage at "click fraud" aside, he agreed with Google.In fact, he said Google was right on the money.

To be clear, they both agree on Microsoft's actions, but not on the meaning of it. Microsoft's use of anonymized click data meant that they observed the results that people were clicking on for these unusual searches. They also both agree that this is just one of many items Microsoft uses to determine relevance. Google even agrees that this isn't so much intentional copying, but an effect of the u

Google has a long history of aggregating data it "borrowed" from other sources. First google news where they used slugs from newspapers to populate their pages. Then google books in which they made books available despite the publishers protests. Why someone shouldn't be allowed to use googles data, when they themselves have built their entire fortune on borrowing others data, is hypocrisy.

Please don't accuse my of trolling, but I somehow agree with parent here.

Moreover, apart from the fun of it, and I admit there's a lot to be made, is there an inherent reason to always condemn Microsoft and absolve Google and the rest? Both/all of them are for profit corporations and of course I don't buy the do-not-evil shit. At least, not 100%. My guess is that both companies tried their best to maximize the efficiency of their results with all means possible. No foul game here.

If I have allowed Microsoft to examine my 'click stream' for the purpose of 'search optimization', what stops them with Google? What if they start snooping around with transactions between myself and my on-line stock broker? Could they conceivably front run my purchase decisions (or sell that data to high speed traders [slashdot.org])?

Well Microsoft's response is sort of self-incriminating really. I mean the summary here basically paints their response as simple posturing and trying to get out of getting caught doing something they're not supposed to. "How dare you! We're better than them! We're smarter than they are! Those people are just trying to make us look bad! That's it, THEY'RE cheating! They're rigging tests and accusing us of things! They're trying to make US look bad because THEY know we're BETTER and it gets their pants all in a knot! Why would WE ever do something like that?!"

We have some of the best minds in the world... after Google, who invented some truly creative and innovative search methods, and then patented them. We have to find a completely different direction that works the same way, kind of, then improve on it.

Bing's search results are generally obtuse, mostly irrelevant and of exceedingly poor quality. Even Yahoo produces more cogent, relevant results. What a pathetic joke Microsoft and its "search engine" have become.

You say that and I partly agree, but it can't be easy to index that quantity of web content and produce meaningful results. The fact that Microsoft can even begain to try, even with some cheating, is impressive.

I've been expecting something new from Yahoo for a few years now. I thought they might be working on something great. Maybe I'm wrong and they really can't keep up with google.

Yeah I've used Bing a few times, it doesn't seem much better than the shitty old MSN search. And their marketing was the very worst I have ever seen for anything. You want me to switch from a search engine to a "decision engine?" You want to give me *less* information? FUCK NO, I'll decide for myself.

Welp, they said 'Full stop.' That means there's no sense arguing because the argument is over.

Look, I'm the Senior Vice President, Online Services Division. I did not copy from that search engine, Google. I never told anybody to copy, not a single time -- never. These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the Internetian people.